the rumors of a ghost

Humpty Dumpty

This is my result for the last motion graphics project. My original goals were somewhat lofty, involving a lot of stop motion mixed with computer based graphics. As I began working on the stop motion, it was clear that it would take much longer than the amount of time I had to work with. Instead of creating a stop motion Humpty Dumpty, I decided to film a live face and superimpose it over a computer based egg image. This worked well and gave a humorous result. In addition, I had created some shots of horses running in front of a field, but I could not get the motion of the horses to look realistic. I plan on going back and trying to work on their motion and perhaps adding it in.

Overall, the result pleases me and was a lot of fun to make. The animals and men were stop motion in front of a green screen that has been set up in my room for a couple weeks. I used a Nikon D200 that was controlled by the computer over USB to capture the images. Previous stop motion attempts I made were done at 12 FPS, though this time, since I was mixing it with 30FPS video, I decided to go at 15 FPS. This slowed me down a bit, but was not much harder and produced a smoother result.

For my next project, now that school has ended and I can devote free time to my own projects, I wanted to try working with proper puppets. I have several friends who are interested in this as well, so hopefully once the workflow with the DSLR is perfected we can get some good results.

In addition, I would like to mention that I got a job working in motion graphics and related areas coming right out of college. This is very exciting, as I am very eager to hone my skills in this area. I realize that I have not been doing this very long and there is so much to learn, but I feel like it is an endless ocean of possibilities for creativity and fostering the various ideas I have floating around inside.